


In the Beginning

by Slanguage



Series: The Righteous Man [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Meeting, M/M, Pre-Slash, Righteous Man Series, Roadhouse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-27
Updated: 2014-11-27
Packaged: 2018-02-27 06:00:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2681750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slanguage/pseuds/Slanguage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before the end of days, there was the day Castiel met the Winchesters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prequel for my existing story, Saved.

It had been a while since he had been back at the Roadhouse.

Castiel rode in his junker car with all of the windows down, an oldie’s station playing too loud on the radio. He’d been driving for too long—he normally took hunts in the mid-west, close to Nebraska and not too far from his new home unit—and his back was stiff, uncomfortable. He was starting to get antsy, free foot tapping anxiously and one elbow leaning out the open window. There was a slight chill in the air, a sign of fall. He pressed harder on the gas pedal.

Castiel had been many places. He had been in the foster system in Montana, so there was no end to the rolling hills and endless skies that he had seen. The job of hunting monsters had taken him to every corner of the country, every coast, and he had seen it all. He had seen the deserts of Arizona and fields of Indiana and the mountainside towns of Tennessee. Castiel had covered many miles in his life, by car and by foot and by obligation, but he would always enjoy the miles he ate under his tires on the way back to the Roadhouse after a long hunt. He would never get used to that feeling of finally coming home.

He had been using the Roadhouse as a home base since he was about twenty-one, stopping in and out in between hunts and checking in with Ellen and Jo when he got the chance. He used them and their hunter regulars as a bit of a hub for information if he wasn’t sure of how to deal with a certain creature during a time-crunch, and he was thankful for this makeshift family that he had accidentally stumbled upon. He was thankful for all of the help and kindness that Ellen had given him, and he was even thankful on a good day for Jo, who was like the little sister he never wanted.

Castiel had lived a lot of his life without the idea of a family. The Harvelles gave him the closest thing that he would get, and that was perfectly fine.

He never had much of a stable family environment. When he was a kid, a monster in the Montana woods killed his parents in front of him, and then he was sent from home to home until he couldn’t take it anymore and ran when he turned sixteen. For those twelve years that he was virtually alone, he didn’t have anyone stable in his life other than a few foster siblings. He had wandered for his entire life, turning up at doorsteps and being let in for as long as they were willing to let him stay—which became a shorter and shorter amount of time the older he grew. So it was nice to eventually wander upon a bar in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska, brought there on the suggestion of a hunter he had met on the road, and for the owner and matriarch to be so willing to let him stay for a while.   

Ellen was a strict woman that was very strong-willed, and she would be able to stare down an ox and overpower it, but she was still one of the kindest-hearted people that Castiel had come across. She was immediately welcoming to him despite a tough façade, and she had helped him find a hunt nearby that she thought would interest him. She had introduced him to her daughter, a recklessly brave young woman that was already hustling her way through games of pool and walking away with stuffed pockets, and Castiel had felt a kindred spirit in a girl restless and reckless in her own skin, and Jo had seemed to find a reciprocated emotion in that as well. When Castiel had left for his hunt, Ellen had welcomed him to come back. And so, he had.

He never stopped going back. Even when and if he found another home, he knew that there would always be a little part of him stuffed somewhere around his heart that would think of the Roadhouse, and think of it as home.

Castiel, back in real time, pulled into the Roadhouse drive, bypassing the front lot and continuing on around to the side, shifting his car into park beside Ellen and Jo’s respective junkers. He cut the engine and threw his duffle over his shoulder and was out of the car before the time the dust settled, trying not to rush too obviously on the way to the front door. He spotted the only car in the lot—a beat-up minivan that looked like it had seen a dozen too many soccer games—and slowed his pace slightly, taking his time to get to the front door.

He opened the door to the Roadhouse Saloon, grinning. Ellen and Jo were standing behind the bar, in conversation with two young men who were sitting with their backs to Castiel. Ellen and Jo, naturally, saw him first. Jo immediately gasped, her face lighting up.

“Castiel!” she cried happily, shedding her apron and rushing around the edge of the bar, barely giving him enough time to drop his duffle before leaping at him, locking her arms around his neck and her legs somewhere around his thighs. Castiel, entirely used to this, just laughed, wrapping his arms around her in kind.

“Good day to you, too, Joanna Beth,” Castiel greeted, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “You do realize that we’ve talked on the phone within the last twenty-four hours.”

“Shut up,” Jo muttered into his collar, holding him even tighter.

Ellen elected to take her time, excusing her and her daughter informally from the men’s company and making her way around the counter at a much slower pace, but her smile was just as bright as Jo’s was, identical in more ways than the one. Jo reluctantly dropped her octopus limbs and surrendered Castiel to the hug of the mother bear instead, Ellen holding him in an iron grip. She squeezed him tight, reassuring herself that he was safe and all in one piece, before she allowed him the joys of breathing, a not exactly rare but not altogether overly common smile of delight on her face. She patting his shoulder fondly but still tried to swipe him away when he darted forward to kiss her cheek.

“The prodigal son returns from war,” Jo intoned dramatically like the narrator of a documentary, ducking quickly out of his reach when Castiel tried to shove her away, laughing despite himself. He was a little too aware of the eyes of the two men sitting at the bar, neither of them touching their drinks but instead watching them curiously, bemused, as if their dynamic was entertaining, like a quirk.

If they were hunters, like they so looked to be, Castiel wasn’t surprised if they would see them like that. There weren’t very many stable family units in their line of work.

“I wasn’t at _war_ , Jo,” Castiel replied, trying to sound more exhausted than he was, but his own laughter was sabotaging him. “Just two separate hauntings and a witch.” Castiel shuddered. “God do I hate witches.”

“Got here just in time,” Ellen commented, moving back to the bar and gesturing to the two men. Castiel turned his gaze to them curiously, smiling kindly when he noticed they were still looking. The taller one smiled back, but the shorter one just allowed him one curt nod. Jo rolled her eyes from where she was hugging Castiel’s arm, leaning her chin as close as she could reach to his shoulder. Ellen redirected his attention from one of the two in particular by announcing, “That’s Sam, and Dean. They’re John Winchester’s boys.”

Castiel had never met the infamous hunter John Winchester, but he had certainly known enough stories, and he knew what the name was like when it came off of Ellen’s tongue. But she said the sons’ names with none of the same malice, with none of the same residual anger and distrust, and Castiel was almost awed at how Ellen was able to do that with people, to set aside her prejudices and allow them to be their own people without her own bias clouding her judgment. Castiel looked back at the men, Sam and Dean, and offered a more welcoming smile in return.

“I’m Castiel Novak,” Castiel greeted them somewhat redundantly, looking a little more closely now that he knew that they weren’t some tourists passing through. “Think of me as the stray that keeps wandering back.”

Jo scoffed and kicked him sideways in the shin but finally let go of his arm to return back to the other side of the bar, reaching for a glass to inevitably pour him a glass of whiskey, as was tradition. Castiel threw his duffle back over his shoulder again, leaning back on his feet to take in the Winchester brothers, who were looking back at him. Time was moving slower than usual—either that or it only seemed to be—but Castiel was still able to look at them without feeling too much like he was staring, gazing at them curiously.

Sam Winchester was the taller brother but obviously the younger one. His hair looked overgrown, hanging in his face and in his eyes, curling under his collar. He looked barely out of college aged, but haunted; he had black bags under his eyes and his face looked too thin, like he hadn’t been eating well lately. But he seemed kind, his eyes a kindling spark of hospitality and niceness, and Castiel decided that he liked him immediately.

And then there was his brother.

Castiel looked at the man, and he could barely breathe.

Castiel had met a lot of beautiful people. He’d even slept with a few of them, men and women, over the course of his life. Castiel didn’t like to compound things like his sexuality and sexual identity into constraints, even such as a word, but all of it flew out the window the moment he properly laid eyes on the eldest Winchester brother, the one he had only heard stories of mentioned as a sort of sidekick next to John’s monstrous wrath. The stories had not told him like this.

Dean Winchester was one of the most gorgeous people Castiel had ever seen.

He was broad shoulders hidden under a brown Henley and green eyes trying to hide behind all of the things that they had seen and a mouth that looked like it had and could do some sinful things. He had freckles just hidden under tanned skin and he was unshaved like he had better things on his mind. He was just a gorgeous person, and Castiel wanted to see him smile because he was sure it would have the capacity to stop wars.

Castiel stared at Dean Winchester and practically felt his whole world shifting under his feet.

Which was almost a ridiculously creepy thought, since Castiel had only technically just met him and hadn’t even heard him speak yet, but Castiel had never been one to hide behind trying to fool himself. Castiel knew better than most the horror of being young and thinking that death was approaching fast and knowing that he hadn’t done half of the things he had wanted to do.

Castiel wasn’t on board for denying himself the little things. And if admiring a gorgeous man from afar was one of those things, he wasn’t entirely against the idea, no matter how different it was from his typically uninterested sense of self.

Castiel figured he could have the crisis later, and instead crossed the room to the bar and slid onto a stool two away from the eldest Winchester, setting his bag down at his feet as Jo set the glass of whiskey down in front of him, time catching back up to regular speed again. Castiel took a sip, pursing his lips momentarily at the burn, before tilting his head back toward the brothers.

“You come here looking for a hunt?” Castiel asked them, raising his eyebrows. Dean smirked a little, a humorless and almost bitter twitch of his lips, and Sam was the one who, ultimately, answered.

“Something like that,” Sam said, and then glanced to Ellen as if to make sure she was listening, as if she would be doing anything else. “We’re looking for something in particular.”

“A demon,” Dean said, the first words that Castiel had heard him say, and he shouldn’t have been so enamored with the eldest brother’s voice. “Our dad spent a lot of time looking for it, but it’s off the grid again, and we need some help.”

That caught Ellen’s attention. She looked up from the glass she was dusting off, looking startled, and her eyes snapped right to Dean’s.

“John didn’t send you here,” she realized something from what must have been in their conversation before, and Dean glanced to his brother before lowering his head, fidgeting with the beer bottle in front of him. Ellen glanced at Sam, who also looked away. Jo’s eyebrows went up, but Ellen seemed to know what that meant, knew it the way she could read anyone who walked into her bar, and her voice was firm but cautious as she ventured, “John wouldn’t want anyone to help. Too much pride. He’s alright, isn’t he?”

“No,” Sam said, while Dean continued to look down like he wanted to be anywhere but here. “No, he isn’t. It was the demon, we think. It, um—it just got him before he got it, I guess.”

There was a moment where Ellen, Jo, and Castiel all didn’t seem to know what to say. Whereas Ellen had known John, at least well enough to have been able to call him a friend at one point, Jo and Castiel had only known him from the stories hunters would bring in of him. And, from what they knew, John was a damn good hunter, strict and cruel but one of the best. And it was never a good feeling, to know that a hunter had died.

“I’m so sorry,” Ellen murmured first.

“It’s okay,” Dean said, sounding suddenly defensive, like she was challenging him. “We’re alright.”

“You sure?” Ellen began, opening her mouth to say more, but Dean’s eyes snapped back to her, fiery with anger and grief and that feeling that comes with the plummet of a rollercoaster, and Castiel’s chest ached in sympathy. Sam seemed to sense that it was either stepping into the conversation or letting Dean possibly spiral into a meltdown because he cleared his throat, drawing enough attention back to him that Dean’s shoulders slumped, out of the line of fire again. Castiel wished there was something, anything in the world he could have said to him right then, but he knew there was nothing so that’s precisely what he said, and the world went on without his advice in it.

“So, look, if you can help, we could use all the help we could get,” Sam was saying to Ellen and Jo, his eyes—whether he was aware of it or not—turning into this puppy-dog thing that even Castiel would have a hard time saying no to. And, no matter how tough Ellen was, she had that parental instinct that immediately folded with that kind of expression.

Jo was just a sucker for boys with dimples.

“Well, we can’t,” Ellen told them honestly. “But Ash will.”

“Who’s Ash?” Sam asked, confused.

Ellen leaned around the counter and barked, “Ash!” Ash immediately sat up from where he had been sleeping on his preferred pool table, rumpled and looking like a hung-over mess. Ash flailed for seemingly no apparent reason. Jo pursed her lips against a grin.

“What?” Ash slurred sleepily, looking around. “It closin’ time?”

“ _That’s_ Ash?” Sam demanded incredulously, turning to the Harvelles like he was expecting it to be a joke. Castiel laughed, and the brothers both turned to look at him like they figured him to be the last sane person in the room with them.

“That’s him,” Castiel said, “and he’s a genius.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Dean remarked as Ash plopped off of the pool table and made his way to them, slapping Castiel on the back before accepting a water glass from Ellen. “This guy’s no genius—he’s a Lynyrd Skynyrd roadie.”

“I like you,” Ash told him, grinning.

Dean looked momentarily surprised, like he had instead been expecting a punch to the face, but he still managed a sardonic, “Thanks.”

“Just give him a chance,” Jo insisted, raising her eyebrows in a challenge when Dean looked at her, but Dean didn’t seem to be in the mood to argue much. He just sighed like he was being personally offended before slapping a large brown folder on the counter from inside of his jacket and sliding it toward Ash.

Castiel figured this was as good of a time as any to duck out. “I’m gonna go catch some sleep before the dinner crowd finds their way in,” Castiel informed them all, grabbing his duffle and finishing off the last of his whiskey. “I’ll be downstairs if anyone needs me.”

“Sure thing, handsome,” Ellen called to his back as Castiel moved into the back area where the bedrooms were, and where the door to the basement was—where he typically slept on a cot when he was visiting—and Castiel couldn’t help but to force himself not to glance over his shoulder as he walked away, forced himself not to hope that the Winchesters would be there when he woke up, but it was a hope long gone by the time he flopped down on the mattress and closed his eyes, because all he could see was green eyes and freckled skin and he was so, so screwed.

~*~

The Winchesters were still there when he emerged from his nap at the beginning of the dinner rush, newly showered and changed into a clean pair of clothes. His body was feeling much better from being cooped up in a car, even if it had immediately after been shoved onto a tiny uncomfortable cot, but, needless to say, Castiel was feeling good, and it may or may not have had a lot to do with the eldest Winchester still meandering around upstairs.

Jo was working already but she was still the first one to spot him when he emerged, shooting him a grin and a wave before whisking herself back off to work and hustle the unsuspecting men that wandered in thinking that she was nothing more than a pretty-faced plaything, and Castiel smirked to himself before shooting a wink to Ellen at the bar. She slipped him a beer and he pushed off from the bar, glancing around. Sam was sitting at the farthest end of the bar with his head buried in a file, reading, while Dean was sitting alone at one of the tables, nursing a beer and glancing around at everyone, seeming unbothered by just wasting time waiting.

Castiel made a split-second decision and headed over to him immediately, catching his eye a few steps out. He inclined his head in a silent question toward one of the empty chairs, and Dean replied back with a _help yourself_ gesture. Castiel pulled the chair out and sat, leaning back into the wood and smiling shyly at the man in front of him.

“Ash able to help you out any?” he figured was a good icebreaker.

“Told us it would take him fifty-one hours,” Dean explained, “three hours ago.”

Castiel laughed, nodding. He understood the impatience that must have been boiling under Dean’s skin, especially after something traumatic, after something happening that meant more than all of the things before it. Dean must have been bursting at the seams. He must have been screaming to get out, clawing at the walls for some kind of escape.

Castiel knew that feeling all too well. He nodded slowly.

“Sorry about your dad,” he said, almost on a reflex.

“Yeah, well,” Dean replied, but he flinched a little, and Castiel knew it must still hurt. “Just trying to keep my eye on the son of a bitch that killed him, you know? Can’t help figuring that that might help some.”

“I know,” Castiel said, and then smiled a little when Dean looked at him with barely stifled curiosity. “Whole family was killed by a wendigo when I was four. Still not quite sure how I got out but, well. I get how sometimes all you’ve got is revenge and anger. Although I’m not condoning that,” Castiel added firmly.

Dean laughed. Castiel was right. It was like sunshine breaking through the clouds of a snowstorm, like the last feeling of hope in a dying man. He was beautiful. Castiel didn’t even want to look away.

“One day I’m sure I won’t either,” Dean informed him, taking a pull of the bottle, and Castiel forced himself to look anywhere other than Dean’s throat.

Like a godsend both a blessing and a cruel injustice, Sam appeared in that moment, sliding into one of the chairs in between them and smiling like he thought he would be needed as a buffer. He was still holding the case file, and his hair was still falling in his face.

“So, Castiel,” Sam began, sounding genuinely friendly and interested in conversation that even Dean smiled a little bit, “do you live here, at the Roadhouse? Or is this kind of like a frequent stop?”

“I’ve been told to consider myself as an honorary Harvelle,” Castiel informed them, and then laughed. “Wandered in seven years ago or so, back when I was twenty-one, and Ellen’s maternal side kicked in. I don’t stay for long periods of time, a week or two at most, but it’s still the longest I stayed in one place for too long. Foster care,” Castiel explained when he caught the look on Sam’s face, smiling to let him know his feelings weren’t hurt. “Wendigo. I was four. I was just exchanging sob stories with your brother.”

Sam let out what sounded like an involuntary laugh. Dean couldn’t seem to help a chuckle of his own, hiding his smile by ducking his head. It made Castiel feel oddly happy, to know he could make this man so tortured by himself smile, that he could give him a reprieve from it all for even a moment. It felt like an honor.

“So,” Castiel began before he could say anything embarrassing, anchoring his elbows on the table and his palms on his beer bottle, grinning at them. “Enough about me—tell me about yourselves. How’d you hear of this place?”

And that’s where it all started. With a few simple confessions, a couple of questions, and a few smiles. That was where it began, where Castiel entered into the Winchester’s story, their gospel. He was pulled toward Dean even in the first moment and entered into conversation with him and his brother for over an hour, talking about cases they had seen in the past and funny anecdotes about their lives, laughing together over shared beers and a kind familiarity, and it was truly there, in the beginning, that Castiel Novak tied his destiny with the Winchesters—a destiny that would continue, despite his wildest dreams, long after the brothers left out the front door of the Roadhouse like ghosts in the night, Sam’s case file clutched in his hand as they headed off for yet another hunt.

Their story began there and even after it all—after the death and betrayal and rage and love and forgiveness—Castiel wouldn’t want to change a second of it.

And that was how it began.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it, y'all! Happy Thanksgiving!
> 
> My Tumblr: shortenedlanguage.tumblr.com
> 
> x Slang


End file.
